Figure 1.
The leaf-cutter ant Atta cephalotes.
Leaf-cutter ants harvest fresh leaf material which they cut from Neotropical rainforests (a) and use them to grow a fungus that serves as the colony's primary food source (b). These ants display a morphologically diverse caste system that reflects a complex division of labor (c) correlated to specific tasks within the colony. These include small workers that undertake garden management and brood care, medium workers that forage leaves, large workers that can serve as soldiers, and winged sexuals that lose their wings after mating. [Photo Credits: foraging workers, Jarrod J. Scott/University of Wisconsin-Madison; fungus garden, Austin D. Lynch/University of Wisconsin-Madison; caste morphology, used under the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3].
Table 1.
General assembly statistics for the genome of the leaf-cutter ant Atta cephalotes.
Figure 2.
Orthology analysis of the Atta cephalotes predicted peptide sequences (green) against the proteomes of the fly Drosophila melanogaster (blue), the wasp Nasonia vitripennis (red), and the honey bee Apis mellifera (yellow).
Figure 3.
Predicted arginine biosynthesis pathway map in Atta cephalotes, Camponotus floridanus, Harpegnathus saltator, Apis mellifera, and Nasonia vitripennis.
This pathway in A. cephalotes was found to be missing the two enzymes agininosuccinate synthase (EC 6.3.4.5) and argininosuccinate lyase (EC 4.3.2.1), which catalyzes the conversion of aspartate and citrulline into arginine. Other enzymes in this pathway include ornithine cabamoyltransferase (EC 2.1.3.3), arginase (EC 3.5.3.1) and nitric oxide synthase (EC 1.14.13.39). Dotted arrows indicate genes encoding proteins which were not found.
Figure 4.
Distribution of hexamerin genes in the genomes of Atta cephalotes, Camponotus floridanus, Harpegnathos saltator, Apis mellifera, and Nasonia vitripennis.
Four hexamerins with varying copy number are found within these genomes except for A. cephalotes which is missing hex 70c. Many of these genes are found to be syntenic along chromosomes/scaffolds, as shown (not drawn to scale).